Hey guys! We got another deck review today. I gotta admit I've been really hooked to this game for a couple of months now and it really seems like there is an endless amount of possible decks that can be played on the competitive level. This deck is becoming pretty much meta in the last couple of days and it's for a good reason. As you'll see in today's review, this deck has so much in terms of, value, tempo, damage output, and everything you'd want to have in a single deck. It feels like it does too much, to be honest, so I definitely recommend you trying it out before they start nerfing it. Okay, now let's take a loot at the decklist.
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Champions
Miss Fortune, not the strongest champion by any means but it fits so well in this deck that there is just no other champion you would take over her. The reason why she is so amazing is how easy it becomes to activate plunder on each attacking turn even if you leave her in the back row and attack with other units. Since this deck isn't using any Scout units, leveling her up won't be that easy but then again, it isn't even necessary because all we want is to activate plunder and help our Sejuani level up instead.
Sejuani on the other hand is really one of the strongest if not the strongest champion currently in the game. Leveling her up isn't much of a problem, especially paired with Miss Fortune and a lot of cards that deal damage to the enemy Nexus. Once leveled up, the first time you deal damage to their Nexus in any turn Frostbites all of the enemy units and at that moment, even cards like Warning Shot become extremely powerful tools that enable you to demolish your opponents. Even before she's leveled up, her Play ability is so strong. Most of the time a removal ability that often even deals damage to the opponent's Nexus, making it even easier to level her up.
Plunder Away!
Now, this is when this deck's potential becomes a bit unfair. Not only are Plunder effects so strong but the ease of activating them makes them borderline broken. If you had to actually force your way through the opponent's blocker to deal damage to activate Plunder this wouldn't be so strong but the fact that you can do it with just a simple Warning Shot, which a 0 mana BURST spell things become pretty ridiculous. On top of that, you can play Yordle Grifters that give you extra Warning Shots, because why not, and sometimes you even steal your opponent's card.
Black Market Merchant and Pilfered Goods aren't only value cards. When combined you can get an insane tempo advantage, while also getting a lot of cards to play. In some lucky scenarios, where you have two Merchants on the board and you play Pilfered Goods, you can dump like 3-4 cards spending less than 5 mana! There is just no way for your opponent to deal with all of that and sometimes you even steal cards that they needed to deal with these situations in the first place.
The third thing that makes Plunder so strong are these insane effects like Riptide Rex or Citrus Courier. I mean, come on. An 8 mana 7/4 that deals 14 damage to the enemy units while also dealing some damage to their Nexus. Or, a 6 mana 4/5 that heals you and gives you Rally, ridiculous! There are more options for these wild effects, like The Tuskraider that doubles all Power and Health on your units in the deck and even draws you a Sejuani that is now 10/12. The only reason we aren't using it in this list is the high mana cost (8), which is already occupied by Riptide Rex.
A Mountain of Pressure
The mana curve of this deck is so smooth. We have six 1-drops and nine 2-drops so the early game is fairly consistent and it gives us an easier time activating Plunder even if we didn't draw any spells to deal damage to Nexus directly. Being able to play at least 1 unit on every turn, gives us decent chances of taking control of the board versus other Aggro decks. Versus Control opponents, having so many units to deal with from the start, they won't find it easy removing all of the threats and most of the time will starve them of answers before they are faced with the "real" threat, Sejuani.
The ability to create so much pressure in such a short amount of time comes from the combination of two things. Fairly cheap, strong units and a lot of burst spells. In most cases, you opponent just can't react to what you are doing. This especially screws, Ionia players, which is considered one of the best defensive regions in the game, at least up until now. They really on messing you up with spells like Deny and Will of the Ionia but those cards feel pretty useless against this deck. Deny can't stop anything, only Make it Rain but that's just a 2 mana spell. And Will of the Ionia even if used on the expensive units won't help that much since now you will be replaying your strong Plunder effects giving you even more value in the process.
Mulligan
The main goal here is just to get a fast start so hard mulliganing for 1 and 2-drops is the way to go. Since our strategy is pretty straightforward, mulligan doesn't really differ that much in any matchup. We just want a hand that says Aggro as much as possible. The mulligan with this deck is a lot simpler than with most decks so let's jump right into best keeps.
Keep in hand against Aggro: Omen Hawk, Jagged Butcher, Make it Rain, Hired Gun.
In these matchups, we want to stay equal on the board until that point where we start playing our bigger threats like Ursine Spirit Walker and Sejuani. Make it Rain is a good pickup to clear board early and possibly activate plunder while Hired Gun enables us more favored trades. Omen Hawk and Butcher aren't necessarily here to deal Nexus damage but just to stall enough until the midgame.
Keep in hand against Control: Omen Hawk, Jagged Buther, Black Market Merchant, Pilfered Goods.
Slower opponents give us almost guaranteed Plunder activation in the first couple of turns, so keeping a Merchant or Pilfered Goods is a must since they will give you a card advantage from the start of the game. A reasonable keep here is also Miss Fortune as she often forces out some removals from the opponent and makes it harder to block your units because of that 1 extra damage that you deal while attacking. Overall, this matchups give you a lot of flexibility in the mulligan as you can keep just about any early game card and be good to go.
Okay, this is it for today's review. I hope you find it useful. This deck is just amazing right now and I urge you to try it out, you won't be disappointed. It is also fairly easy to pilot as all you want to do is Plunder, and Plunder some more. I'm pretty confident to say that this deck will be nerfed, I don't know exactly how, but most likely they will make it harder to level up the Sejuani since the deck is doing fine without her and she should be more like a finisher. Currently, it is too easy to level her up so that "finishing moment" comes so fast and if your opponent can't deal with it right away they straight up lose the game.
I just want to add for any follower of my GU content, don't worry, something is cooking up. And once the expansion hits there will be a lot of things to cover. Right now the game is kinda stale so I just don't have too much to cover.
Embrace the beast within! - Sejuani
Thank you for reading!
,z3ll